He glanced around, hoping he hadn’t stopped on another pack’s territory. As far as he knew, there were no packs in this region. He didn’t know why, but there hadn’t been one for as long as he could remember.
No, this scent was too faint. It wasn’t a pack. Maybe it was a single shifter, someone passing through, much like he was. He glanced around, searching for the source of the scent as if someone might suddenly appear, but there was no one around.
If he had walked into another pack’s territory, he would offer an apology and head out once more. For now, he grabbed his bag off the back of the bike and turned toward the door. Inside, a lean and neatly dressed man stood behind the counter. His brows were furrowed as he spoke with a blond woman leaning against the check-in counter.
Jax couldn’t help but check out the back of the woman. She stood on one foot; the other hooked around her ankle so that her toe ground into the expensive carpet beneath her. Her dark jeans wrapped around her high and tight rear, making Jax pause for a moment. His mind blanked, and his mouth went dry.
He hoped she was staying at the lodge. Hell, he hoped he would run into her at the bar.
But, as he came around, he noticed the gun strapped to her hip and the badge she’d placed on the counter.
Cop.
Jax pressed his lips together and took a step back. The dark color of his skin didn’t always sit well with those of the badge, and so he opted to keep quiet while she argued with the clerk.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am. But, without a warrant, I can’t release that information to you.”
She growled, a sound fitting of a shifter if he’d ever seen one. Yet, he didn’t think she was. She didn’t scent of animal. She smelled of gunmetal and Lily of the Valley.
“Don’t give me that ma’am crap, Connor. We went to high school together.”
The clerk sneered. “That doesn’t change the fact that you’re trying to circumvent the law.”
“There are people’s lives at stake!” She punched the counter. “I’m only asking you to help me save these people.”
His shoulders dropped. The weight of loss pressed in on the man, Connor. It was a feeling Jax had lived with for years now. The sight of it reminded him of his own weight. The ghosts of those he’d lost returned. They wailed, the cries of their deaths echoing in Jax’s ears.
He cringed and bent his head as though he could shut them out. The sounds still echoed through his skull. Each scream was a jacked spike in his skull. The pain bent him until he staggered toward the door.
Jax burst into the open air, but the screams only grew louder. Ellen Bart had run for the bedroom. Her husband stood in the hall, a wall against Killian. Yet, the younger shifter had been stronger. The Alpha’s howl cut through the night. Jax had been glued to the spot by his Alpha’s command. If he’d been stronger, he could have broken through it.
If he’d been stronger, he could have prevented Ellen’s howls of pain as they rippled through the night over and over. The sound had left a scar on him. The scar festered until it healed into a cancerous mass. It infected his mind and plagued his sleep.
Jax had understood why Killian murdered his old Alpha and Joanna’s brother, but Ellen had been the voice that hurt him the most. Ellen had been human and weak. She’d been defenseless in the face of her husband’s death, but that hadn’t stopped Killian.
His knees tried to drop him, but Jax forced them to carry his weight as he staggered into the parking lot. The voice howled through him. He let his head fall back, tried to take in the open, blue sky above him and wait for the voices to fade, but the wolf had other ideas.
The creature living beneath his skin let out a soul-shattering howl. It cried for the people it had lost, the people it had failed. The wolf wept and thrashed. The night returned, sucking his beast into it. The creature tumbled into the memories, trapped and unable to fight back as it relived the horror all over again.
Jax’s fingers curled against his thigh, nails beginning to lengthen into claws.
“Hey!” a female voice called out to him.
His back tightened. The female cop.
Jax couldn’t deal with her while the ghost haunted him. The screams refused to leave him be. They refused to let go. The wolf needed to escape. It needed to save its family, its Pack.
Chapter Two
Sydney watched the dark-skinned man stumble around the side of the building. She cocked a brow, ready to follow after the suspicious man, but a voice called out behind her. Connor appeared, his arms over his chest and a sassy pout on his lips.
“I called my boss. You have the OK to look at the guest register, but only for today.”
Her heart leaped with elation, but she turned to look back toward where the man had gone. “Have you seen him before?”
Connor followed her gaze and looked back to her with a question on his face.
“Tall, dark, and handsome,” she reiterated. “He ran out of the lobby as if he’d seen a ghost. Has he stayed here before?”
“I would have remembered if someone that attractive had stayed here.” Connor’s sass was going to kill her.
She sighed, glancing one more time as if the man might appear in the shadows of the fir trees. He’d been alluring, cutting an imposing figure with his broad shoulders and defined muscles. Dark hair had been cropped close to his head, and obsidian eyes burned as he’d taken in his surroundings.
Sydney bit the inside of her lip and forced herself to turn back to the matter at hand. She couldn’t get distracted now. If anything, she tucked the man’s face away for later. The way he’d run away set off alarms in her head, but there was a small window of access to the Lodge’s registry, and she wasn’t about to waste it.
Inside, Sydney leaned against the clerk’s counter and scanned through the names on the registry. None of them stood out, not even one of the missing persons. She reached for one of the cheap cookies the Lodge offered for free and cracked it in half. She told herself she’d save the other half for later, but after reading a few more names, the other half disappeared, too.
Connor asked her if she found anything useful and all she could do was glare at him. There were some people coming and going around the time some of the people had gone missing, but there was no one who’d checked in and out each time a person disappeared.
As much as she’d wanted it to be a drifter, Sydney was starting to suspect that a local had a hand in the missing people. She absent-mindedly nibbled on another cookie, even though Connor told her that her ass would get bigger if she had a third, and tried to consider where the people might have been taken from.
Trisha Bantiff had disappeared on her lunch hour at work. Her co-workers said she’d gone out for her regular, a salad and coffee from the café on the corner. Sydney had checked in with the café, and the baristas said they’d been surprised when she hadn’t shown up that day. That put her disappearance somewhere around noon.
About a week and a half later, Theo Mortensen disappeared after dropping off a client’s car. She’d thoroughly vetted the client and even issued a search warrant to go through the client’s house. It’d frustratingly turned up nothing. There was no trace of Theo to be found anywhere.
No one put any of the disappearances together until another person disappeared a month later. Veronica Longely was the girlfriend of the new mayor. It put the politician under the harsh light of the law, but when they’d found nothing other than an idyllic relationship and Veronica’s penchant for night time walks, law enforcement was forced to consider the disappearances might have something to do with one another.
Whatever they did have in common, Sydney could not find out. She leaned away from the computer, her back groaning from being hunched and her stomach protesting from the cookies she’d mindlessly eaten. An hour had passed, and she was no closer to finding a connection that she had been.
Instead of sitting and thinking of what it might mean for her job, she slipped off the stool and headed for the door. The man’s face fro
m earlier crept into her mind. She hated to assume he might be suspect, but his actions hadn’t been all that reassuring. When he’d come in, she’d been openly pressuring for information, her badge clearly displayed. He’d spared no time in running out of the lobby.
Outside, the air was crisp and smelled of wet earth and pine. It filled her lungs, as familiar as her bed. Instead of lingering and soaking it in, she looked around the parking lot. Her unmarked SUV sat across from the lobby doors. The lot stretched to her left, offering spots outside the room doors. The only thing that had changed since she’d arrived was the motorcycle now parked outside the lobby.
Her lips twisted to the side. It wasn’t the best vehicle for grabbing people, she thought. It was, though, fast and dexterous. It would easily outpace her SUV.
Who was this man, she wondered? Her hand on her hip near her gun, she pressed around the side of the building. Nature butted up against it, trying to grip the cabin inspired architecture and destroy it. She ducked beneath a low hanging branch, her fingers coming away with sap when she reached to push it away. Sydney cursed under her breath and tried wiping it on her jeans. Sap was oppressively annoying.
Distracted, she didn’t see the massive beast ahead of her until it growled. Her head snapped up, and she locked eyes with a golden-eyed dog.
No, dog was too small of a word. This could be nothing more than a wolf. It stood eye level with her as she hunched beneath the branch.
***
Jax shook himself. Sap stuck to his skin in irritating spots after his run. It’s gotten into his fur and made needles stick to his skin. His hands were covered with it. Grimacing and cursing himself, he did the best he could to brush it away and headed toward the lobby door. As much as his wolf would have liked to sleep beneath the stars, Jax’s human body ached and begged for a bed. A shower would be nice, too, he thought.
Blessedly, Connor was gone, and a thick human woman stood behind the counter. She snapped her chewing gum before looking up at him. A smile spread across her lips until she caught sight of the sap stuck to his hands. The look faltered, but she pulled it back up, fake and dead now.
“I need a room for the night,” Jax said, slapping his credit card onto the counter.
She considered it as if she might not pick it up after he’d touched it, but finally, she gave in and grabbed the card. While the woman entered his information into the system, Jax’s mind wandered back to the cop from earlier.
The cop had gone looking for him and found his beast. The creature had still been battling the ghosts haunting them, still caught in the night they’d failed to protect their family when she’d surprised them. The beast had growled at her and scared her. He’d seen the fear in her eyes but noticed the steady hands she’d used to pull the gun from its holster.
The wolf knew human steel wouldn’t do much unless she shot him between the eyes. Jax had been about to whisper to his wolf that this human just might be that good of a shot when the wolf’s growl died. He’d been surprised, especially when the spikes of pain in their mind receded.
His wolf crouched and laid itself on the ground before her. Comfort washed over Jax and eased the tension from his bunched muscles. The cop had stared down at him with slightly parted lips. Wonder filled her eyes. He’d wanted her to touch him. He and the wolf wanted her fingers in their fur.
Yet, she’d slowly backed away and left them alone. He wanted to run after her, a desire that came out of nowhere. Part of Jax wanted to see the cop again, hoped to see her still arguing with Connor in the lobby. Another part of him knew flirting with law enforcement was not the best idea.
“Room for one?” the clerk asked.
“No one else here but me,” he responded. He would have given the clerk a smirk and leaned into her if he hadn’t been covered in sap. She was cute, but the wolf seemed disinterested.
If anything, at the thought of sex, the wolf summoned the cop’s face. Jax frowned at the wolf’s idea of sex.
“Yeah, it’s just me.” Jax moved to run a hand through his hair until he remembered the dirt on his palm. “Can you have someone bring extra towels later, too?”
She gave him a tight-lipped smile, nodded, and handed him a room key as if ready to be done with him. He wanted to offer her a smile, to try to ease the tension rolling off her, but all he could do was take the key, grab his card, and slink out the door.
A thought struck him, and he spun around. The woman stifled a groan and turned back toward him, clearly annoyed with his return.
“I saw a cop in here earlier,” he began. “Should I be worried? Is there a serial killer on the loose or something?”
Even speaking the words made bile rise and burn the back of his throat. Killian’s smile flashed through his mind. Yet, Jax did his best to keep a soft smile on his face.
“She came back again?” the woman bemoaned. “Sydney needs to learn to throw in the towel.”
“You call the cops by their first name here?”
She shrugged. “We all grew up together here. Sydney is looking into the disappearance of a few outsiders. If you ask me, I think the mayor’s girlfriend got sick of the small-town life. She probably thought he’d be a big city mayor when they hooked up and he brought her back here to boring-ville.”
“Disappearances? How many have there been? Should I be concerned?”
“If anything, you look like you could have grabbed them,” she said, snorting. “But, like I said, I think they all just up and left town. There’s been three or four in the past month. I don’t blame them for leaving. Not for a minute.”
A sad yearning crossed the woman’s face. Jax said his good byes and left her to her unspoken emotions.
The Lodge’s rooms ran along the side of the mountain, doors on the outside much like a motel. It made coming a going a bit easier. He pulled up his bike’s kickstand and marched it over to the room number on his key before parking it again.
Chapter Three
That night, Sydney dreamed of the massive black wolf she’d run into the day before. Its golden eyes bored into her and peeled away the layers of strength and indifference she’d wrapped around herself. The eyes saw her core, the girl that cared too much about those around her. The girl that couldn’t keep them alive.
She thought the wolf might pounce on the weak girl it’d found. She raised her arms in front of her face and braced herself for pain. Yet, it never came. Slowly, her arms fell away and, with wonder, she watched the wolf stalk toward her. Its head bobbed, and its tongue rolled out the side of its mouth.
Confusion and an unusual warmth filled her chest. She reached out, the wolf’s head rising into her hands. Fingers curled through thick, black fur, and together they dropped to the forest floor.
She woke, the night still pressing on her. Her heart thumped a powerful rhythm. She rolled over to stare out the window. A single street lamp glowed against the night. The breath she’d been holding escaped her, and the weight of her life hit her.
Somewhere, beyond that window, someone was abducting innocent people in her town. People were scared, hurt, or… dead. Nevertheless, here she was dreaming about a wolf she’d seen outside Sunset Peak Lodge. Sydney pressed her fisted hand against her forehead and used the other to slap the nightstand in search of her phone.
The clock read 4:45 AM. She groaned and decided it was enough sleep before throwing her feet out of bed. Bare skin touched the cold floor and made her ache to crawl back beneath the heavy blankets. Instead, she forced herself forward, shrugging on a pair of most likely dirty sweat pants and searching for her slippers in the dark.
Sydney padded down stairs, slapping the brew button on her coffee maker before leaving to boot the computer in her office. Minutes later, she was settled at her desk with a coffee mug in hand. The light of her computer monitor illuminated the desk’s surface so she could read the files.
She couldn’t go to the station after sunrise. She had nothing new to offer and would be thrown out on her ass faster than she could say
hello. Sydney chewed her cheek and looked over the files, hoping something new would jump out at her. She pulled the notes from the Lodge’s registry that she’d taken on a cheap Lodge notepad.
It was completely possible that the people had simply left. Sure, it was a leap of a coincidence, but it was possible. She didn’t think this many people would rise up with concerns and missing person’s reports. Trisha’s family had filed at least four different missing persons reports. The mayor himself had spent countless hours in the station trying to help them get to the bottom of Veronica’s disappearance.
None of them had any outside family contacts for the police to call. So far, that was the only connection Sydney had seen.
Her mind drifted back to the Lodge, to the man she’d seen for only moments. His face had drained of blood, and he’d lurched out the door like a man chased by demons. Had it been the sight of a cop or something else that had driven him?
If he was a vagabond, kidnapping and hurting people, his sudden disappearance made sense. The wolf, on the other hand, did not make sense. As far as she knew, there were red wolves in the mountains, not many, but a few. She’d never heard of pony-sized black wolves roaming the mountainsides.
Her instincts prickled, a distant voice screeching with words she couldn’t hear. All she knew was that it wanted her to go back to the Lodge. It wanted her to go back to the man. If he wasn’t responsible for the kidnappings, she figured he might know something about them. That was the only explanation she could think of for the way he’d reacted.
This case had to break at some point. She needed this to unfold before her and grant some kind of redemption in the eyes of her boss, of her co-workers. As hard as she tried, there had been a time when she’d royally screwed up.
The sensation of the gun pressed into her palm returned even though her gun was locked in a safe. Her hands trembled as she was reeled back into the memory. Before it could claim her, she sucked in a breath and slammed a door on it. The slam rattled through her, and her head snapped up.
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